HISTORY OF SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE

The course is foreseen for students at the 1st year of the MA Degree Programme “Comparative International Relations” (curriculum "Eastern Europe", core educational activity).
The historical nature of the course contributes to the multidisciplinary goals of the MA Degree Programme. Furthermore, its geographical focus on South-Eastern Europe constributes to the teaching programmes specifically conceived for MA students interested in deepening their knowledge about that area. The thematic focus on social marginality and the public policies about it allows to deepening the knowledge related to some historical issues and their legacy in the actual public debates.

The main goal of the course is to examine the history of social marginality in the Balkans. The social phenomena which will be taken into consideration are: poverty, unemployment, prostitution, mental illness; with a particular attention to the case of Roma in the Balkans. The analysis will consider the time between the late 19th up to the end of the 20th century. The learning goals are the following:

- to familiarize with and to be able to understand the historical development of the social and legal contexts wich structured the various forms of social marginalities and which oriented the official policies toward them
- to include South-East Europe in a comparative international context
- to become acquainted with the most recent historiographical debate around the course's issues
- to be able to apply this knowledge to a critical understanding of the present time
- to refine your communication skills

A basic knowledge of modern and contemporary history (at least the whole high school history programm; furthermore, at least 6 ECTS in the political, social or historical field, acquired in the framework of the first degree), with a particular attention to Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. In this regard, the reference works are the following:

Guido Franzinetti, I Balcani: 1878-2001, Carocci, Roma 2006 (or later editions).
Francesco Guida, L’altra metà dell’Europa. Dalla Grande guerra ai giorni nostri, Laterza 2015, particularly pp. 33-84.
Stefano Bottoni, Un altro Novecento. L’Europa orientale dal 1919 a oggi, Roma, Carocci, 2011 (the parts about South-Eastern Europe).

For a long-term perspective:
Egidio Ivetic, I Balcani. Civiltà confini, popoli (1453-1912), Bologna, il Mulino, 2020.
Armando Pitassio, Corso introduttivo allo studio della storia dell'Europa orientale, Perugia, Morlacchi Editore, 2011 (the parts about South-Eastern Europe).
Giulia Lami, Storia dell'Europa orientale. Da Napoleone alla fine della Prima guerra mondiale, Firenze, Le Monnier, 2019 (the parts about South-Eastern Europe).

The course will look at the Balkan peninsula thourgh the prism of the forms of social marginality which characterized its modern history. The sub-topics which will be examined are the following:

- interpretative issues regarding phenomena of social marginality: how did the public discourses about them evolve during the time
- to what extent measures of assistance are intertwined with forms of social disciplining
- to what extent can we speak of specifically Balkan forms of social marginality
- how can this analysis be useful for a better understanding of the recent history of that region, in an international comparativ perspective

- Beate Althammer, Tamara Stazic-Wendt, Introduction, in Beate Althammer, Lutz Raphael, Tamara Stazic-Wendt (a cura di), Rescuing the Vulnerable: Poverty, Welfare and Social Ties in Modern Europe, New York, Berghahn, 2016, pp. 1-22.
- Nadir Özbek, “‘Beggars’ and ‘Vagrants’ in Ottoman State Policy and Public Discourse, 1876–1914”, Middle Eastern Studies, (2009), 45:5, 783-801.
- Paolo Sorcinelli, Viaggio nella storia sociale, Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2009, capp. 2, 4.
- Nikolay Aretov, „Ricchi e Poveri: Images of Wealth and Poverty in Nineteenth-Century Bulgarian Literature“, in Davidova, Wealth in the Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Balkans, 229-254.
- Stefano Petrungaro, “La Jugoslavia postbellica: una moderna storia di conflitto e controllo sociale”, in Qualestoria, vol. 48, pp. 21-35.
- Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered, „Protecting the national body: regulating the practice and the place of prostitution in early republican Turkey“, Gender, Place and Culture, 2013, 7, 839–857.
- Jelena Seferović, “Reflection on the (Un)Power of Men in the Context of Post-war Everyday Life of Croatian War Veterans with Mental Disorders from World War I”, in Synthesis Philosophica, 69 (2020), 1, pp. 25-44.
- Sevasti Trubeta, „‚Gypsiness‘, Racial discourse and Persecution: Balkan Roma during the Second World War“, Nationalities Papers, 31 (2003), 4, 495-514
- Stratos N. Dordanas, „‘Common women’ or ‘women of free morals’: the suppression of prostitution in post-war Thessaloniki (1945–1955)“, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Vol. 35 No. 2 (2011) 212–232.
- Julija Sardelić, „Roma between ethnic group and an ´underclass´ as portrayed through newspaper discourses in socialist Slovenia´, in Rory Archer, Igor Duda, Paul Stubbs (Hrsg.), Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism (London-New York: Routledge, 2016), 95-111.
- Dimitri Monos, "Rebetico: The Music of the Greek Urban Working Class", The International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society", 1(2), 1987, pp. 111-119.
- Gerda Dalipaj, „Roma Communities in Elbasan“, in Andreas Hemming, Gentiana Kera, Enriketa Pandelejmoni (Hrsg.): Albania: Family, Society and Culture in the 20th century (Zürich-Wien: Lit, 2012), 131-146.
- Rory Archer, “Social Inequalities and the Studies of Yugoslavia’s Dissolution”, in Rory Archer, Igor Duda, Paul Stubbs (Hrsg.), Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism (London-New York: Routledge, 2016), ch. 6.

For those who attend classes:

1. Group presentations (30 minutes max.) on a text in the syllabus.
The aim is to evaluate the oral communication skills, as well as the ability to work synergically with other students (10% of the final grade);

2. Written test (90% of the final grade)
The examination has three main goals:
1) to verifying the knowledge of the main historical facts and processes, as well as the most relevant personalities, with relation to the treated topics
2) to verify the analytical skills and the ability of the student to formulate critical reflections about the historiographical issues emerged during the lessons
3) to verify the knowledge of some elements of historical comparison in the framework of the East-Central and South-East European space.
The written examination (duration: 1½ hours) also aims at verifying the written communicative skills of the student.
Due to the COVID-19 emergency, the test could take place on-line, through the Moodle platform. Please, check the communications about this regard on the Moodle-section dedicated to this course.

For those who do not attend classes:
only the written examination (see above, point 2).

The course includes both lectures and short oral presentations by the students. Due to the COVID-19 emergency, lectures could be took place partly or entirely on-line, through the Moodle platform.

Italian

The teacher is easily available for questions concerning the course at his office hours and by email at stefano.petrungaro@unive.it. Emails have to be written in a formal style (not "Hi prof." or "Salve prof.", but "Good morning", "Buongiorno", and the likes) and should not ask questions whose answer can be found in the information contained in this syllabus. The teacher is also available for discussing final thesis' projects.

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